100-Drabble Challenge
by EverleighBain
Summary: First set of drabbles for NirCele's 100 Drabble Challenge. PM her for the list of prompts-this is such a fun project and great inspiration to stay writing.
1. Chapter 1: Fire

_After months of stagnant creativity and the general demands of real-life, I am trying my hand at this 100 Drabble Challenge in the hopes of stirring up some writing productivity._

 _Thank you so much to NirCele who is the impetus behind this challenge and who provides the prompts, and also to LadyLindariel who manages the community!_

 _Also to Levade, for unrelenting encouragement._

* * *

 **Fire**

Halimath. So dry the grasses rattle like the witch-bones of a seer and the skyline swims in shimmering distortion. It has not rained for months. The pines moan, crackle, sift needles down into a twenty-league bed of tinder.

Secluded somewhere in their midst, a valley.

He is underling. Worthless, nameless. But he will earn the master's favor.

He lets his torch caress the grass. Fire ribbons towards the treeline. Licks the first low branches, sheets black into the sky.

By dusk he stands on the verge of a mile of destruction. A river of fire runs south.

Imladris will burn.


	2. Chapter 2: Pets

_I find myself currently in possession of a two-year-old and a longsuffering border collie. This, therefore, seemed the most natural course to take with the "pets" prompt._

 _I had all kinds of fun digging up obscure medieval terms of the hunt for this one, but if anyone happens to have real knowledge of these things and finds me guilty of malapropism, please don't be afraid to speak up!_

 _My thanks, as ever, to Levade, for getting me into this ;)_

* * *

 **Pets**

Still in sleep I bay and harrow down the kitted boar and taste his heat and tang and stink as the pack unmakes him all around me. I hear the call and rumble of the huntsman and am nearly mad with joyful ravening.

But then I wake and remember that old tusk-mark down my haunch. Feel the hot slabbed hearth, the fire licking warmth into my limbs.

Once I hounded the boar and the wolf and the dark unmen who stank of hate and cowardice, whose reek clung filthy to my tongue. Once I was fleet and fierce and tireless and my jaws could crush the marrowed thighbone of a hart. Once mine was the duty of obedience, of the love of he who bade me.

Now I am old. I ache in the damp. I have a new duty.

The pup finds me. He is a good pup, and I loved his sire dearly. He is newly weaned, still unsteady on his fat hind legs. His mother leaves him with me and I sigh, for he understands not that the fire will burn him, that he will fall from high places, that the spider-eyed cat curled on the mantle has a demon's soul and should not be trusted.

But I am old, and his dam must tend her work. My lot now is to mind the litterlings.

He is the same as any pup. He worries my ruff and laves my snout and batters me with sticks. I do not correct him unless he wanders.

He smells of the den still, milky sweetness, though he has no littermates. When clothed, he smells of this serene and quiet place we've come to.

He smells faintly of his sire, smoke and steel and sovereignty.

I roll flat. He scales me like a high hill.

After a while he tires and nests into my belly and sleeps snuffling, paws fluttering, pink mouth suckling the air. I clean soot from his ear. Rest my head and the heat seeps and I doze.

And dream of the pack, the pack in full tongue, the boar hindquartered in at bay before us, carving furious at the loam, and behind us the call, _avoy! avoy!_ the hornsong beating fire in our blood. The black taste of bristly hide.

I dream of Arathorn and smell him on his sleeping son and am content with this new duty.

* * *

 _Thank you so much for reading!_


	3. Chapter 3: Transportation

_Thank you so much for the lovely reviews!_

 _This one is 100 words._

* * *

 **Transportation**

Procuring sailcloth proved the greatest difficulty. A healer broomed them from the Halls when she caught them pillaging the linen cupboards.

"Perhaps a cart." The younger scuffed his shoe against the pearl-white balustrade.

"Nonsense." The eldest strode on jauntily. The rearmost of his tunic bore an exuberant blotch of dust. "You are too easily whipped."

-o0o-

The Lady Beruthiel, austere in wefts of gold and regal burgundy, a pristine tabby embroidered upon her skirted knees, turned over once and like some winged bottom-feeder undulated down Anduin and onward towards the Sea.

"A cart," muttered the drenched first-mate.

"Silence!" snapped the captain.


	4. Chapter 4: Threats

_The "plants" prompt, which technically should come next if one was to do these in order, was kicking my rear. So I cheated and wrote "threats" instead._

 _I'm the writer, after all, these stories are supposed to do what I tell them!_

 _Hmmph._

 _400 words, a couple of them salty. Soldiers will be soldiers, I suppose..._

* * *

 **Threats**

We'll laugh about it later, and prod you in the ribs and say, _You lucky sod, the ladies on the field that day. How many shed their sleeves to pin upon your spear, so reassured were they to see your pretty face had not been battered bloody?_

But the truth, cousin, the truth… sit five old men around a fire and four will have seen a Rider dragged to death in such a manner. The bile sits uneasy in my belly when I think of it—had Erkenbrand and his fleetfooted Hyrnet not been there to run you down….

Damn you, Éomer, and your flat-heeled farmer's boots. I would have you sacrifice a whit of nimbleness at swordplay on the ground to know you will not run your foot right through the stirrup so again.

Be still, jolthead, you're full of thorns from collar to knees. Pull them out yourself if it so pleases you, though I doubt your stiff neck bends that far. Helm's beard, boy, you look as if you've been rubbed the wrong way on a rasp.

Though I deem you'll have a pretty tale to tell on your wedding night.

By the way she simpered after you, that little Wilda would have you tell it tomorrow.

Have I not told you to send that grey nag to the draymen? Let him drag a plow to death, if all he wants to do is shy and run. I'll have no such creature in an éored of mine. You only deign to keep him because Éowyn is besotted with the way he carries that blocky head.

Hush. You will have to deny her someday. It is not Éowyn who must make him hold a steady line and trust him through the spear-thrust.

Be still, I said. You had better hope you never take an arrow—these thistlepricks are not even in the meat. Someday you'll collect a real wound, and Oxa will have to sit on your head to keep you still while it is tended.

Easy now, nearly done.

Look at me, cousin. You will find another, or I will have your sword. Stop your grinning, Éomer, I am deadly serious. Find a steed of sound mind, or you and your flat boots will spend the autumn in Aldburg threshing barley with the women.

I'll not hunt Hillmen any more fearful for you than I already am.

* * *

 _Thank you so much for reading!_


	5. Chapter 5: Plants

_If you squint, there is a plant in this one._

 _300 words (a smattering of which may or may not be completely made up)._

* * *

 **Plants**

The battle began as it always did.

Erestor passed the dreaded platter. Down it came, past Elrohir, who spooned a modest serving, past the lady at his elbow, who garnished hers with cheese.

The host handed it on untouched, not looking down from his enraptured conversation. Hope rose in the watcher's chest.

But next it came to Elladan, who sat upon the immediate left. This individual heaped his own plate with a vile slick of ruminage and reached to bestow his dinner companion with a similar portion.

The dinner companion gave a mighty sigh.

The elder smiled. He turned and bent and murmured in a low and pleasant voice, "Until the last, young master, if you please, and you will spare us your usual theatrics."

The young master dared not sigh again. Rebellion rose and crested in his spirit; he quelled it with a willful twist. Like Beren in his bitter chains, he would bear this torment valiantly.

The stuff was immasticable. It would not break down between his teeth, but enlarged the more he gnawed it. It tasted of frog scum and the refuse scraped from a goblin's underside.

Doggedly, he mowed through half. The remainder leered at him. His gorge inflated in his throat.

From the right appeared a surreptitious fork. With a nimble twist it spooled up the dregs of unctuous greenery and whisked them away while Elladan was nose-deep in his goblet.

The erstwhile diner peeked up. Glorfindel, deep in conversation with the guest at his right hand, slid a blunt fingernail between two rear teeth and did not so much as glance at the small person seated next to him.

But underneath the table, out of sight of disapproving eyes, a boot bumped his in clandestine conspiracy.

Estel courteously asked Elladan to pass the venison.


	6. Chapter 6: Oaths

_Skipping way ahead here, to the "Oaths" prompt._

 _400 words._

* * *

 **Oaths**

He leaves the house with the lady's token—furled and faceless and weighty as a thousand years of wandering—tucked beneath his arm. Theirs had been a brief interlude. He finds her difficult to look upon. Not as a boy besotted and afraid his passions show starkly on his face, but as a man uneasy in the company of one who plumbs his heart so easily. Hearts are hers to understand, though he knows she guards the knowledge faithfully. Still in her company he waits, not as friend nor kinsman, but as vassal waiting to be bid.

Her charge had been simple. "Bear my blessing to him, Dúnadan, and if he so wills, bear it further."

But then her head lowered, her gem-fretted hair a plunge of shadow on her shoulders, across the carven hollow of her throat. Her voice when she spoke again was not that of a queen, but of a woman whose beloved has ventured into deadly toil. He recognized it without thought; it nipped into his chest and made him long, suddenly and sharply, for Thaliel.

"You claimed what would be, and not what was," she said. "You named him king before even the wise could see clearly that this hour would come upon him…."

A pause. Her fear ghosted between them. For the first time he looked her squarely in the eye.

And her voice grew level again, fortified into a clear and certain chord. "Go now to him, Halbarad, now when his need for a brother is greatest. My long labor I commend to you. I can do no more for him."

His breath had caught. _Can do no more? You who cast your strength across him like a shield, wrought your will into his own, into his breath and blood and bones. You fettered him when else he would have flown; you drove him to his labor when he would have returned to it no longer. I know the thing you have lain down for him, lady. I know the weight of it that wracks him in the night. In this we are alike. You, a daughter of kings and legends, and I, wretched vagabond of a ruined house. Into whatever doom we will bear our love for him, into whatever sorrow. In this we are alike._

Aloud he answered only, "By my life or death, _tarinya_ , it shall be as you say."

* * *

 _Thank you so much for reading, and for all the amazing feedback!_


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